K-12 operators streamline menu operations with technology

In a lunchroom beholden to ever-changing federal regulations, specialized student diets and wildly varying tastes in food, the role of the K-12 foodservice director can get complicated fast.

It’s not always easy to keep track of important information such as nutrition facts and meal contributions. And, in the event a school lunch program gets audited, operators will be expected to produce an organized, detailed report with all those numbers.

What’s a foodservice director to do? Hand in shoddy nutrition reports to the government and hope they don’t notice?

There’s a better solution, thanks to technology. Smart, innovative use of technology can make a foodservice operator’s job much more manageable.

By bringing technology into the lunchroom, foodservice operators can create databases of their kitchen inventory, easily storing and tracking nutritional information for all their offerings. They can also compile and publish detailed reports with ease and even plan menus weeks ahead of time and compare nutritional values with those required by the USDA.

There’s lots of technology options for all these tasks. Word processors and spreadsheet generators are obvious choices, but there are a variety of project-management solutions such as Asana, Slack and Mavenlink that can help streamline operations. A particularly organized foodservice director could even combine different software, but that could quickly become confusing.

A smarter solution is to use a fully-integrated, all-in-one menu planning service designed specifically for K-12 foodservice operators. Student Lunch Menu, the new menu planning service powered by ONcore®, is just that.

With Student Lunch Menu, users can access the database of over 10,000 popular products to build menu templates. As the menus are built, nutritional information automatically populates to check against USDA regulations. That way, users know immediately whether their menus are compliant.

Afterward, a menu template can be easily dragged and dropped onto the calendar from the dashboard. If any changes need to be made to a menu template, Student Lunch Menu makes it easy to make edits. And if any sudden changes arise for a specific day’s menus, it’s easy to edit those, too. Editing one day’s menu won’t change its parent menu template, either.

Additionally, Student Lunch Menu is mobile friendly. Users can access all the service’s features wherever they are, so long as they have a smartphone or tablet.

Because it's an all-in-one solution, foodservice directors can easily compile and export reports with all the information required by the USDA straight from the software itself, and Student Lunch Menu is always up-to-date with the latest changes made by the government.

If all that weren’t useful enough, Student Lunch Menu also boasts a team of full-time registered dietitians who are available and ready to answer any and all questions users may have about menu building and student nutritional needs.

Student Lunch Menu is the wind at your back—it’s time to take flight! Swoop on over to Student Lunch Menu to get started today. New users can sign up for a free 7-day trial to give the service a try.